Can Israel win back Americans’ support?
OAN Commentary by: Adonis Hoffman
Thursday, May 28, 2026
There is an uneasy quiet in the Persian Gulf. The ceasefire with Iran, however tenuous, is holding. Israel has emerged intact from one of the most dangerous chapters of its modern history. By every military measure, these are notable achievements that cannot be diminished.
Yet Israel has never been more endangered in one arena vital to its security: the American public square. No honest accounting can ignore what has happened to Israel’s standing in America while the bombs were falling.
Pew Research Center’s April 2026 survey found that nearly six in 10 Americans now view Israel unfavorably. Those holding a “very unfavorable” view have nearly tripled since 2022, rising to 28 percent. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, unfavorable views have reached 80 percent. Among Republicans under 50, a majority now views Israel unfavorably.
These are not political opinions or protest statistics from a campus demonstration. They are documented, measurable, accelerating facts. Like the writing on Belshazzar’s wall, they are a warning sign that demands to be read and not rationalized away.
Researchers at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies have documented the breadth of the problem: Negative sentiment has spread to younger Republicans, evangelical Christians, and Democrats of all ages — constituencies whose support was once assumed rather than earned. If the trend holds, Israel may soon find itself without a reliable base of support in either of America’s political parties. For a nation whose security architecture has rested on bipartisan American support for seven decades, that is a dire development.
Not surprisingly, this did not begin with the Iran war, although the war has not helped. Last fall, Gallup’s annual tracking already found American sympathy for Israelis falling beneath 50 percent for the first time in nearly 25 years, driven by Democrats and independents but with measurable movement among younger Americans of every political stripe.
Gaza compounds the problem considerably. With the world’s attention fixed on Iran, Gaza has become less of a political priority and more of a continuing moral burden. Israeli forces now control as much as 64 percent of Gaza’s territory. Although the Israelis can claim a legitimate military calculus there, the humanitarian conditions, civilian suffering, contested narratives and images of destruction continue to shape American opinion in ways no Israeli government can afford to dismiss.
Recent allegations concerning the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, which Israeli officials have denounced as false and inflammatory, reflect an increasingly hostile media narrative surrounding Israel. In this environment, rationality, context and reality are often subsumed by sensationalism, selective outrage and, at times, antisemitism. That cannot become the lasting impression in American discourse.
To their credit, many Israelis understand the situation. A recent survey found 72 percent of Israelis worried about their country’s diminished standing in American public opinion, evincing a clear-eyed view of a problem their government has come to address with some belated urgency. In fairness, when security is the consuming preoccupation, reputation becomes secondary. But reputations, once lost, are not revived by military success alone.
And now there is a harder truth that needs acknowledgment: Israel’s advocates in U.S. public life are largely the same voices that have always made the case, reaching the same audiences through the same channels — for the most part, preaching to the converted. That may have been adequate in less contentious times. It is not adequate now, when skepticism has crossed generational, partisan, religious, racial and cultural lines.
Israel not only needs more defenders; it needs more credible witnesses. It needs new messengers carrying a time-tested truth into corners of American life where the case for Israel has become stale. It needs civic leaders, business leaders, clergy, veterans, educators, diverse voices, independent thinkers, and public figures whose authority derives from conviction and not convenience, and whose credibility does not depend upon being predictable.
Israel needs Americans who can explain why Israel’s survival matters not only to Israel itself or to Jews, and not only to foreign policy experts, but to the moral architecture of the free world.
In short, Israel needs a refresh and a reset that acknowledges the realities of America in the 2020s and beyond.
This is not a public relations problem in the narrow sense. It is a civic, strategic and policy challenge. Neither Americans nor Israelis should risk policy driven by polls. If support for Israel becomes confined to older voters, partisan reflexes, institutional statements, and familiar advocacy circles, then the foundation of the U.S.-Israel relationship will continue to narrow precisely when the world is becoming more complicated.
America’s bond with Israel is rooted in something more sacred than policy preferences. It is a covenant forged in faith, tempered by history and tested by war. Like any covenant worth defending, it demands tending and does not renew on sentiment alone. Warts and all, the U.S.-Israel relationship remains one of the most consequential in history, and its slow depletion — evidenced by poor public opinion — should trouble leaders in both countries.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Adonis Hoffman writes on business, law, and policy. He served in senior legal roles at the FCC and in the U.S. House of Representatives where he was counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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